A self-organized key management scheme for ad hoc networks based on identity-based cryptography

Ad hoc networks represent a very modern technology for providing communication between devices without the need of any prior infrastructure set up, and thus in an "on the spot" manner. But there is a catch: so far there isn't any security scheme that would suit the ad hoc properties of this type of networks and that would also accomplish the needed security objectives. The most promising proposals are the self-organized schemes. This paper presents a work in progress aiming at developing a new self-organized key management scheme that uses identity based cryptography for making impossible some of the attacks that can be performed over the schemes proposed so far, while preserving their advantages. The paper starts with a survey of the most important self-organized key management schemes and a short analysis of the advantages and disadvantages they have. Then, it presents our new scheme, and by using informal analysis, it presents the advantages it has over the other proposals.